Art by Norman E. Masters

Lithe bodies making abstract patterns against the painted backdrop of palm trees and waves breaking on a shoreline. A symbolic dance. I turn off the TV and walk barefoot through the rooms of my house, feeling my feet lift my light body. Leaping and soaring in space.

Last night I played sacred music on my violin and the dancers were my extension. Someday perhaps I may return to earth as a Whole Musician, producing sounds simultaneous with my Soul's Action.

What is the Word of God? Why is so much importance placed on symbolic word intelligence? Must everything be named and defined and categorized?

Are not Life's ecstacies remembered more than mundane facts?

My first recollection of a mysticism that became my innate companion: at age three hearing and seeing bagpipers for the first time. But was it the first time? Conjured from the forms and sounds was a deeper memory from another time. The pure joy of this and other similar moments needs no explanation.

But the terror: that near-death experience when I ran in front of a car on a busy thoroughfare. For a naked moment, I faced extinction. On the other hand, I do not remember the near-drownings except as they were told to me by my mother. Apparently having one's earth-life wiped out by an irresistible force is one thing. Returning to water depths where one swims (as one dances) out of primordial feeling, is another!

Who can explain utter peace? My adolescent evenings alone on the small dock my father built on Hood Canal where I grew up. The merging of light and shadow with madrona trees receding into the dark shore -- and no thing standing between me and the fathomless water where forever dwells the reflected sky. I can still see phosphorescent shapes gleaming in the depths mingling with budding stars. Where are the words to tell of this ecstacy? Peace beyond understanding.

Is much gained by a long life? A life whose grandest moments are too often interrupted by endurance of the trivial?

But who can judge time in the space of one ecstatic moment? Is it not worth all endurance to experience the joy of one's own dancing spirit? There is no tragedy in the body's demise when one's fullness has been lived. The only sadness is that Real Moments of Life are spaced too far apart. And perhaps sealed forever, not in words but in the eternal movement of heart's Feeling.

If there be a God, let IT be LOVE. Not words.

Ever Thine,
Pauline Fox